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Star Trek Online: New Path to F2P Dev Blog Debuts
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The Star Trek Online team has a new developer blog on the official site designed to give players an inside look at the transition from a subscription-based game to a free to play title.
The first installment of the blog deals with the new test server, Red Shirt, and the change in status of the old test server, Tribble. Tribble will now be a place for subscribers to check out "all the exciting changes coming in our free-to-play re-launch of the game."
According to the blog post, Tribble is slated to reopen today.
Read the full blog post on the Star Trek Online site.
Comments
Ever since DStahl (the only guy over there who seemed to know what the f*ck he was doing) was asked to leave, my interest in returning to this game has dropped back down to almost zero. I'll wait and see if Cryptic continues to make improvements, or if they complete the F2P conversion and just let things stagnate.
My money's on the latter, although I'd really like to be surprised in this regard.
Dstahl was not asked to leave. He has a new job in SF where his fiancee lives, but said he might be back if things dont work out there. People who are asked to leave dont get to come back if they want. As far as the future of STO goes, only time will tell. But they are in much better hands with PW than Atari, thats for sure.
Ok, lets just stop right here. You don't know he was asked to leave. You are assuming. Im not one to praise this game or Cryptic very much, but if you have a gripe, make sure you know what the hell you are talking about first.
Like D'angelo said on the forums, people who are asked to leave don't get to continue posting on the forums for a couple of weeks, nor do they get to post a lengthy goodbye letter to the community.
As for the topic, notice that the new tutorial is up for testing and is why they aren't allowing character transfers right now. Nice!
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Ahh the classic P2P goes P2W timeline has emerged once again,
1: Big hype before release.
2: Company sells lifetime subs.
3: Game launches.
4: Game is a pile of poo.
5: Everyone "Gets to da choppa!".
6: Population dies.
7: Game is circling the drain.
8: Go F2P!!!!!!!
9: Announces massive increase in playerbase.
10: Crawls away and shrivels up in a cold dark hole with the others.
Or in short the whole 1-10 timeline can be understood with this,
FACT!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Either way, cryptic is the worst mmo company in all of existence.
No content for 7 months in a game with no content? what do they do? Put effort into cosmetics (cstore)and f2p of course!
Never buy another product from these ass clowns
Personally, I dont understand their F2P model. If you look at it, the free players get the usual restrictions like bank and inventory size but they get access to all the missions. If I was a subscriber, I would drop my sub, pay $50 and get everything I want from the C-store and play for free for the rest of my time ingame. Lifers now get C-store points so they dont have to spend as much money in the c-store.
From a purely business standpoint, I dont know how they plan to make more money in the long run using this model. Will more people try the game once it goes F2P and buy a few things, yes but that is a short term win. A year from now, with ToR, SW and GW2 in full swing and the F2P newness gone from STO, I dont see the game making as much money as it is right now. The only thing that would change my opinion is if C-Store prices went up and more work began on featured episodes (FE) than they have done in the past. If they priced FE's at $20 a pop and could crank out 5 good ones a year, I think they could turn profitable.
But yeah, I don't understand it either.
Whats so funny about that, Star Trek and Champions Online have always been rip off games. Only difference now is you won't have to buy the game, period.
Their C Store on top of a monthly fee will only get worse over time so yes, not much transition to do here. Still mad PW bought them instead of letting Craptic rot.
We need a MMORPG Cataclysm asap, finish the dark age of MMORPGS now!
"Everything you're bitching about is wrong. People don't have the time to invest in corpse runs, impossible zones, or long winded quests. Sometimes, they just want to pop on and play."
"Then maybe MMORPGs aren't for you."
Slowest GIF EVER I love it!
As the game has virtualy no paying subscribers left, going F2P will not make much of a difference in the financial status of this game initialy.
However, since the only ones still playing are the poor souls that got snookered into a lifetime sub, this system will probably end up making Cryptic more money as the players remaining continue to poor money into the C store in a desperate attempt to find any fun in this game.
This whole f2p thing is probably my fault. I blame myself. Awhile back I was wishing for a T5 connie refit and was told no this would not happen. In my anger I wished something would happen to their company to facillitate my dream. And now it looks like things are indeed changing. A change of leadership. A change in owners. And now they change to f2p. No they haven't announced it yet, but I feel we are closer than we were to realizing my dream than we were last year.
If they had just given me my T5 connie refit none of this would have happened. If they had given me a T5 connie refit AND a T5 connie (TOS style), the would have probably doubled their revenue stream and been hailed as the saviors of the mmo genre. But in their pride, they angered me, and my powers are increasing.
dont ruin this for "us", or atleast me. Id atleast like to try it with barely in restrictions.
Part 2 is now up, showing changes to the mission UI. Looks pretty sweet.
I want a mmorpg where people have gone through misery, have gone through school stuff and actually have had sex even. -sagil
Okay i'm one of the biggest critics when it comes to corporations but i have to say that all these P2W whiners and people who haven't tried the game since Season 4 came out should not be posting ANYTHING since they have no idea what they are talking about at this point. P2W means you can buy items that help you have a instant win button. This is not the case even for ships as even the Galaxy X is not a win instantly button with it's phaser lance. Secondly, PW was the best thing to happen to this game imo, this website isn't even talking about the DOFF system (Screens here, here and here. ) which i believe will be one of the many new in game factors that will get rid of flaming kids who's only goal in a game is to RAID for everything end game. It actually requires a little time now to get abilities that work well which is great because as F2P you have all the time you need. Mission UI is only the first step. Look here at what's proposed for the future of this game before passing judgement.
It's no different then LOTRO having it's free point system in it's game. I literally earned so many points i bought all of the leveling zones for free in that game so it was no cost to me either. :P F2P business models like this are actually making massive loads of money long after they launch because they appeal to what people like to do, cosmetics, pets, game enhancements. Who knows why this model works but it does, been tried and true over and over again. It also increases the ability of the devs to actually keep enough people to churn out new content faster then the Sub only game model with Rift as the acception of course even though reports from the community have pointed to the time between Rift's new content being longer and longer and longer with each release. Also, I think it's ironic that you included GW2 in your list of games that would kill this one as GW2 is ALL microstore and no sub.